links with the past
by Pixie Angel
Summary: FINISHED Cecilia has lived in Sanc college all her life. she doesn't know anything but the roofs and the college walls. but when she learns the truth of her identity, will she be able to leave? if i get reviews, i will continue, but this is finito.
1. chapter one

As the small figure ran frantically through the snow away from the burning building, stumbling through the two feet of snow, her only thought was to keep herself and her dæmon safe.  
  
"Little one, little Zan, what shall we do now?" she sobbed into her dæmon's soft white fur. " What will we do?"  
  
At the time the little girl, ashes smeared across her face and her only belongings stuffed hastily into the pockets of her black fur coat, had no idea just how special she really was. For she was the key to a secret society, and she herself a medical wonder. She would not find out how special she was until she was 14, ten years later.  
  
  
  
#1  
  
"Zanhoriel! But you said! That's cheating. I'm not going to play with you if you cheat." The girl flounced from the room, her blonde ringlets bouncing as she ran.  
  
"Don't do that, you know it's the way we always play! I always cheat, and you always complain that I always cheat."  
  
"Well there should be exceptions from the rule." The girl flopped onto her white goose feather bed and rolled onto her stomach, facing the tiger that had just entered the palace of white and silver that was her bedroom.  
  
"Cecilia, when are you going to redo this room? It's dreadful!" changing from a tiger to a small white mouse, the dæmon scurried along the skirting board and up the hanging curtains of the girls bed.  
  
"I've already told you, you naughty thing, I'm not. I like it this way. It's lovely. Any way, I'm tired of playing hide and seek. It's no fun when I always lose."  
  
" Then let's discuss what everyone in the college is discussing, your mothers wedding." The kitten had done this deliberately, she knew how much it annoyed her friend that her mother was getting married. As one of the only female scholars and explorers at Sanc College, Elzabeth often got a lot of attention. Her young daughter was also regarded as a worthy topic of conversation, since Cecilia was the youngest ever scholar of an english college, never mind the fact that she was female. She had begun attending lectures by sneaking in at the age of seven, when she came to live with her mother. She had no real memory of life before that, but understood that she had stayed with relatives until her mother came back from an expedition and decided to settle down with her daughter. When it was discovered that she was sneaking into the lecture halls and hiding inside the desks of the scholars, she had been punished and told to stay away. But she kept coming back until they could not think of any way to punish her. So the college masters (showing for the first time the affection they held for the girl) allowed her to become a student. She was eight years old.  
  
Now, six years later, Cecilia was still hopping back and forward from London, where she stayed with an aunt and learned how to be a young lady, to Sanc College where she learned to argue with men twice her age, and come off better in the argument.  
  
"Oh don't!" Zanhoriel paid for her little bit of fun by having a pillow thrown at her. But since it was stuffed entirely with baby duck feathers, and wasn't all that heavy, she just batted it to the side and pounced on it, her kitten nature of the moment getting the better of her. "You're beastly zan-zan, really you are! But about mothers wedding, it's just too bad isn't it? I didn't even know that she'd met someone in the north while she was away. It's just ghastly, and that man! He's an utter brute! Isn't he? I said 'isn't he?'"  
  
"What?" the now Black Panther cub spat out a mouthful of feathers and gave her friend an apologetic look. "Yes, yes, quite."  
  
"Zanhoriel!" Cecilia shrieked, throwing another pillow at her dæmon, "I'm going through a crisis, and you're eating my cushions. Beast!" she giggled and threw another pillow at the cub.  
  
"Grrrr!" she laughed back, before quickly changing into a butterfly, her multi-coloured wings fluttering about the head of the blonde girl.  
  
"Cecilia! Is that you I hear child? What are you doing in your room at this time of day?"  
  
"Oh no!" groaned Zanhoriel. "We're supposed to be downstairs, learning horrid history with the librarian. If she catches us, we're done for!"  
  
"Then we'll just have to not let her catch us, wont we?" Cecilia gave her friend a wink before scooping up the white ferret and bundling it inside her cardigan. She ran to the window and climbed onto the window seat, pushing up the window in one quick movement. Looking back only once, to make sure that she still had a little time to pull off her complex mission, she scampered through the window and onto the roof of the colleges sleeping quarters (not an easy task considering she was wearing standard college uniform of poodle skirt with patent shoes and a fluffy cardigan that her mother insisted she wore. And carrying her dæmon with one hand.). She pushed the window so that it slid down, and made sure it stopped on the pencil that she had left there to make sure she didn't get trapped outside. Once sure that she wasn't going to end up living on the roof permanently, she gathered up her skirt and released her dæmon, who promptly turned into a goldfinch, so that she wouldn't have to carry her over the tiles. Together they made their way to the top of the roof, and down along the West Side until they came to a reinforced gutter. It was reinforced because Cecilia was best friends with he tiler who cared for the gutters, and as a special favour he had put supports under the gutters and edges around them so that she could walk the roof without danger. Cecilia pretended to be balancing on a tight rope hundreds of feet in the air, in front of a huge audience. If it hadn't been dinnertime, she would have had quite a large audience, there would have been scholars bustling from class to class, discussing politics in the autumn quad, above which she roamed. She loved this part of the college, it was hers, only she had walked this part of the school, only she had seen this insect or that bird sitting on the chimney, cocking it's head the way all animals did when they sensed Cecilia. No living thing feared her, for they sensed that like them, she was a thing of the wild, she didn't belong inside, with the scholars and professors, she belonged outside, with the birds and the stray cats that fed off scraps in the kitchen. No one except for the birds and the animals knew that she would come up her and play her pretend games if the world got too much for her. No one that is, except her mother.  
  
It had happened in winter one year. Cecilia was thirteen, and she had woken in the middle of the night. She had looked out the window to see snow falling gently past the window, feather light and soft as air. She decided there and then to go onto the roof so that she could make snow angels her father in heaven could see. She climbed onto the roof, with only her white slippers and white fur coat to protect her from the biting cold, only to find that it wasn't cold. The air, although tinged with frost, had been warm. She discarded the coat and climbed to the top of the roof, while Zanhoriel ran ahead as a snow fox. Her yelp and the cry of alarm from a figure sitting on the flat part of the roof behind the chimneys had sent Cecilia running to her aid, only to find her mother sitting there.  
  
"What're you doing here?" the question sounded rude, but only from shock.  
  
"I might ask you the same thing. It's almost two in the morning!"  
  
"I came to make snow angels for daddy." She hadn't expected to tell her mother the truth, but once it was out of her mouth, she couldn't take it back. The thought didn't make her sad, as she had never known her father, he had died before she moved to the college. In fact, that was why her mother told her she had moved back. The thought of her daughter knowing neither of her parents had scared her.  
  
"Me too honey, me too. Come here and give me a hug." Cecilia had gone to her, and together they sat in the snow for a long time, laughing as their dæmon's played together. When Cecilia had awoken, she was back in her bed, and it was morning. The snow had melted in the too warm air, and so had the knowledge that the night spent on the roof had been more than a dream.  
  
But for now, all Cecilia knew was the freedom she felt when she stood on top of her chimney, with Zanhoriel flying above her in large, sweeping eagle circles, singing 'oh I do love to be beside the seaside' into the wind. She imagined it carrying her voice to another land, another world, where a boy just like her was doing the same thing. She would even yell questions into the wind, then silently wait for an answer. When she received word of a new event from the boy on the other side of the world, she would quickly discuss it with her imaginary friend.  
  
And it was in this way that Cecilia learned of something that would change her world forever. 


	2. chapter two

Disclaimer: I don't own anything except my freedom, which is temporarily on loan to the school for the next seven years. Thank you: to all those people, you know who you are, mainly Corinne, Sufia, Jasmin, Susan, and all those I don't have space to mention, also, f**k you to those certain people, you know who you are.  
  
#2  
  
"Cecilia, it's late, please can we go back inside now?" the fox growled impatiently. She was distinctly feeling the hunger that racked both her and her friend's stomachs.  
  
"No, please can we stay here for just a bit? This telescope is so amazing, I can see Venus!"  
  
"But I'm hungry! It's almost three in the morning. I need some food."  
  
"Stop complaining. If you're bored, then go drop some stones down the chimney" the girl paused to adjust her telescope so that she could focus her lens on mars. "Cook is always baffled to find them in the ashes in the morning."  
  
"Why do we always have to do this your way?" the dæmon complained, but knew that her complaints fell on deaf ears. When Cecilia was stargazing nothing would get her away, not even the imposing threat of death by starvation. "I think I'm going to go crazy and drop stones down this other one instead. Cook never uses it; it's for the store cupboard. No idea why they would put a chimney in the store cupboard, but I once heard a rumour that they would put prisoners in there and brick it up, then slowly starve them out, using only they chimney for light and air. Except Gerald said." and it went on, Zan knew that she could rattle away and not bother Cecilia, but it was fun just to talk to herself anyway.  
  
She changed into an owl and then decided against that and changed into a pelican. It was colder, because mid spring nights were not wonderfully warm things in London, but she would be able to pick up more pebbles. Waddling around, she used her feet to scratch out and then lift into her beak whatever stones or small hard things she could find. When she filled her beak up she waddled back to the chosen chimney and dumped them carefully around the top of the brickwork. Changing quickly into squirrel form, she picked up a small rock and jumped across the chasm, her anticipation at the possibility of falling the one storey drop into the room below sending shivers down her spine. Cecilia felt it too, and looked over at her dæmon, a grin playing on her lips. Adopting premium rock-throwing stance, she flung the small stone into the blackness, listening for the sound of it hitting the bottom. But she listened for one second, two, three, and eventually it came. But not the short sharp rickety tinkety sound that it should have made, that it always made, but instead a long bounce, bounce, bounce, echoing sound.  
  
Curios now, she picked up another, larger stone, and flung that one down as well. Again, one second, two, almost four seconds passed before that hollow echoing sound came.  
  
"Cecilia, I think-"  
  
"I know, I felt your curiosity, what is it?" distinctly disturbed by the incredibly strong curiosity that her dæmon was emitting, she had packed up her telescope and wandered over to the chimney side.  
  
"Well, it's weird. You know how the floor below this chimney is only one floor below us?"  
  
"Yeah, what of it?" Cecilia found the revelation distinctly lacking in the 'wow!' department.  
  
"That's not it! I was dropping stones down the chimney, and instead of the sound it should make, it makes a long hollow echo-y sound."  
  
"And. your point is?"  
  
"Well, it's hard to explain, listen for yourself." The squirrel picked up another stone and dropped it down the chimney. Together they waited for three seconds before the distant clatter came bouncing up at them.  
  
"But, that's not possible! It hit the floor way after it should have. What the hell do you think is going on? I mean, that means," she paused, doin the calculations in her head. When she finished, her eyes grew wide and she slowly swivelled to face the hole in front of her. " That means, that the stone fell more than fifty feet before it hit the bottom."*  
  
***  
  
"Morning sweetheart."  
  
Cecilia heard her mother, but with that listless inactive part of her mind that didn't really care what was going on on the outside. She carried on staring at her porridge, scooping some up in her spoon and then tipping her spoon so that it all slid off. Just one look at her dæmon would have told any outsider what was going on.  
  
She was curled around the girl's neck, fast asleep.  
  
"Cecilia, I think these late nights of yours are tacking their toll. Maybe you should think about packing in the astromology for a bit?"  
  
"Hmm?" Finally registering her mother's presence (mostly because her mother's dæmon had just pinched her own), she looked up. Her eyes were glazed over and she had failed to notice that the ribbon holding her hair up clashed horribly with her dress, and that it was trailing half undone down her back.  
  
"I think you're coming down with.sommeil influenza. Why don't I tell the scholars that you're desperately ill, and will try and continue your studies alone, in your room?" Even though the indulgent twinkle was in her mother's eyes, Cecilia sat up when she heard the wistful tone her she was speaking with, like someone desperately trying to sound cheerful.  
  
"Thank you." Cecilia tried to smile, but found the action totally and utterly beyond her. It was taking up too much energy just keeping her eyes open. She got up and kissed her mother on the cheek before moving toward the door.  
  
"Cecilia," her mother called just before she got to the door of the immense breakfast room. " can you come to my study in half an hour, stay in your room and don't leave there until then, ok? After we speak you may go and do whatever you wish for the day. Understood?"  
  
Cecilia nodded and left, but only just got to the door in time to suppress the shudder that racked her. Her mother had given her a .knowing look, almost. Like her mother knew about what she and Zanhoriel had discovered.  
  
***  
  
"She told us to stay here."  
  
"But we never listen, why should today be the exception?"  
  
"Because today it's important!"  
  
"How? How is it any more important than every other time we've done something she's told us not to?" Cecilia was angry. She desperately wanted to check on the chimney, but Zanhoriel refused to leave the room. She could do it alone, but she preferred to have company at all times, she didn't like being alone.  
  
"Because this time it's not an adventure, it's real, and I think she knows. Don't you get it? She's not going to stop us. If she were going to try and stop us, she would have done it already. She practically kidnapped us when we wanted to climb the chapel roof and bungee off the spire." Zanhoriel was worried, and annoyed, but mostly worried. It had been her idea to see if they could climb down the hole in the chimney, but Cecilia wasn't taking it seriously. Where as the pole cat thought it would be better if the packed supply's, just in case they encountered anything in this hidey hole they couldn't deal with, Cecilia wanted to ignore her mother and grab the nearest rope so that the could jump down.  
  
"How could she possibly know? There's no way she could know." Cecilia stated it with such conviction that Zanhoriel knew she could only be doubting the statement.  
  
"I don't know. The same way she's known everything since we got here. Just motherly intuition I guess."  
  
"Well I don't care. I'm going-"  
  
"Where are you going?" Cecilia was cut short by her mother's voice from the door. She was leaning against the doorpost; her dæmon sat complacently by her feet.  
  
"No-nowhere." Cecilia gulped. For all her bravado to her dæmon, she was never intending to leave before her mother got to the room. She had never really intended for Zanhoriel to take her seriously, and judging by the way the snowy owl nibbled at her ear, she hadn't.  
  
"Good, because I have roughly an hour to tell you some things, and I wouldn't want you to have to leave in the middle." She walked across the room and sat down at the dressing table, a silver piece of furniture designed for Cecilia by one of her mother's courtiers, and loved by the child herself. Its scrolling metalwork gave her joy just running her fingers along it. Now her mother repeated the action she had seen Cecilia do so many times.  
  
"Child, you have been told that your father died many years ago, and that his death prompted me to bring you to the college. You were not told the truth. You were told that my name is Elzabeth Parry. You were not told the truth. You were told that I am your mother," a choke caught in the woman's throat, and she turned her head so that her long dark blonde hair hid her face. Cecilia knew what the next words were, and whispered them for this woman.  
  
"I was not told the truth." She felt as though someone had just come into her room and told her that she had been asleep her whole life, and that everything she knew had been in a dream. She covered her mouth and fled from the room into the small bathroom next door, bending over the silver sink and retching again and again. She had her eyes closed tight, and Zanhoriel, although also feeling the nausea that racked them both, changed into a black monkey and held the girl's hair away from her face.  
  
Cecilia flickered her eyes when she felt her mothers, no, the woman's hands on her back, rubbing gently and soothing the dry hot feeling lodged in her throat. But she did not open them, she kept them shut and slid to the floor, and by the time her head lay against the floor, both herself and her dæmon had fainted dead away.  
  
*****  
  
*I don't know the exact calculation's, but I had to make it a big number, for reasons which will be unveiled later in the story.  
  
All my writing luv, (To certain people, you know who you are.) Shini's angel. 


	3. chapter three

This chapter dedicated to: Bards Soul  
  
#3  
  
Cecilia woke to find herself on her bed, and the first thing she saw was her mother, wiping her face with a damp cloth.  
  
As the memories rushed back into her mind, she grimaced and flinched away from the hand, turning her head and her body away from the woman.  
  
"Who are you?" she tried to say, but it came out silent. She cleared her throat and tried again. "How long was I . asleep?" this time the words came out fuzzy, but they were there.  
  
"About 15 minutes. It does not matter, if you are awake now then you are fine." She woman squeezed the water out of the cloth and took it and the bowl of water into the next room, where Cecilia could hear the sound of it being poured away.  
  
"Who are you? I mean, if you're not my mother?"  
  
"I will answer that question, but you must listen to me.  
  
You have been told all these lies for a reason. It was not to hurt you, or to kidnap you or for any purpose other than to keep you safe. My name is Lyra, Lyra Belaqua or Silvertongue. The former is a name given to me by my own mother, who I hated with a deep passion. The latter is the name given to me by someone I loved dearly, and who was as close to my heart as one of his kind ever got. I carry him with me everywhere. The name you have known me by is Elzabeth parry, a name I had to use so that my enemies couldn't find me. William parry was the only man I have ever loved. I met him as a child and together we shared a love never equalled, never to be experienced again. His mother too, was special, but he loved her more than anything in the world. Possibly more than me. No, definitely more than me, but in a different way.  
  
We separated as children, and I have only seen him once since then, although he knew not that I was there. He did not recognise me. It hurt me deeply, to see him swing his children in the air, and to see him hug his wife. But I could not reveal who I was, lest I risk breaking my heart a second time. Possibly breaking his too. But that was soon swept out of my mind, until later, because I came to be in possession of you. You are the daughter of a nobleman, a man who strove for much the same things as my father did. I hated my father, for he was cruel and uncaring and callous. But your father was different. He was loving and balanced and he cared more for you and your mother than I would think possible. But unfortunately even his diplomatic nature and love of everything did not stop others from hating him. Certain . people did not wish to see him succeed in his task, but he strove on. Even he couldn't see or think about how far someone would go to stop his voice from being heard.  
  
One day, ten years ago, someone broke into your father's estate when you and your family were asleep. They set the curtains in the dance hall alight, and locked all the doors and windows. The blaze caught onto the Christmas tree and spread upstairs to the family sleeping quarters. Within an hour the whole house had burned to the ground, killing almost everyone in it.  
  
Except you. Somehow, you managed to escape the burning house, and you hid in the hunting forest on the grounds. I came to the house as soon as I heard that the whole family had died, but a mystery greeted me. When the . bodies were removed from the house, they had found no trace of you. No one knew, but you had run to your fathers cabin, and where living there quite comfortably, for about three days. The snow melted a bit by then, and I left my group staying in the nearby village to come and find you. I suspected that you had gone to the cabin, as I knew from letters from your father that it was the place you and your brother most liked to visit. Yes, you had a brother, although he was kidnapped by the same group who killed your parents, about a year before the attack. I found you weeping in the melting snow outside the cabin, and I took you back to the village, handing you into the care of a local woman who I knew could keep silent about your identity. From being Cecilia Lyra Ivanovitch, you became Cecilia Narcissa Parry. You lived with the woman until I came back for you, when you were seven. I had killed the leader of the group that assassinated your parents, and I had killed most of the group itself. It had taken me three years, but I avenged their deaths.  
  
I took you from the woman and placed you in Sank College, where I had an old friend. I became Elzabeth parry, and I worked at becoming one of the most famous female scholars. And that is where this story ends. Now, it is your turn to carry on extending the story, the legend." Exhausted, the woman allowed herself to shed a tear, and Cecilia watched it track a path down her smooth skin, then drop from her cheek onto the counterpane, where it mad the smallest of dark marks. "Do you have any questions?"  
  
"Why?" Cecilia had made the question as short as physically possible, but Lyra seemed to understand.  
  
"Because I know that you are planning to leave the college through the chimney, and you must not go unarmed, for if you do, you shall surely fail in your task."  
  
"Who was my father? What was his name? What was he fighting for?" she could feel the strength slowly seeping back into her limbs, and she sat up, rubbing her eyes and trying to get over the enormity of what she had just been told. She ignored the fact that the woman knew about they chimney, at least for the present moment.  
  
"His name was William Ivanovitch, and he was fighting for freedom from oppression. For freedom for the whole world, and all of the worlds."  
  
"Ivanovitch means son of John. I know I am not Russian, so I know that Ivanovitch is a pseudonym. Stop lying and tell me the truth." Her eyes flashed dangerously know, and seemed out of place in the morning sunlight, like finding something sinister and knowing in a place full of light and innocence.  
  
"You are more clever than I had known, I did not expect to have to tell you all of this."  
  
"Expectations that people have of me are rarely held true. Tell me."  
  
"His real name was William Parry, my first and only love, holder of the Subtle Knife, fighter for freedom from the Kingdom of Heaven." 


	4. chapter four

Dedicated to everyone who reviewed; AySz88, rumpleteasza, and bards soul.  
  
Wow.. I feel *SO* confident about this fic. I mean... look at the torrents of reviews... (by the way, that was sarcasm, but thank you to bards soul, who seems to be the only person who remembers that writers need constant attention, otherwise they get sulky and stop writing. He's given this fic the breath of life. Literally. I was about to toss it onto the scrap heap, along with the other ones that never made it; suffer the little children, and in the dead of night.)  
  
#4  
  
"This means nothing to me. A name is a name is a name. Tell me about why it is that you took me in."  
  
"You wouldn't understand" Lyra turned her head to the side, gazing out of the window, unaware of the child's eyes on her face. Those eyes were filled with something resembling confusion, but colder and more hurt.  
  
"Try me." She got off the bed and walked towards the window, Zanhoriel flying after her in dove form.  
  
"You and Zanhoriel can separate over long distances, can you not? Much longer distances than most humans." She didn't wait for a reply before she went on. " It is a power that usually only witches have. I was interested by your ability to do this, and decided that it would be in your best interest for me to keep you safe from anyone who might want to. exploit your powers."  
  
Cecilia knew this was a lie, even though it was only one small thing that gave her a clue. This woman was a good liar, no doubt abut it.  
  
"Fine, but how did you know that I had this power when you found me? You couldn't have known just from seeing me."  
  
"Your dæmon was a mile away from the hut when I found you. She was gathering food."  
  
This seemed like a fair enough answer, so Cecilia moved on to her next question.  
  
"Tell me the truth woman. Why did you take me?" Cecilia eyes flashed with defiance, but even she recoiled at the look Lyra gave her.  
  
"Child! I have lived more than you ever will, been through more than you possibly could! I saved you and I will save you again, but I won't be spoken to like this! You will treat me with respect! Just because I am a liar, you have no excuse to treat me like I have never been kind to you. You will listen now, and stop talking as though you know everything. You know nothing!" the outburst left her flushed, her cheeks red and her breath short. She hadn't been this angry with someone since. since she had found out that she would not be able to live with Will. Oh, she could remember how much she cried, and how loud she wailed.  
  
"Well excuse me, but discovering that the person you have loved all your life has lied to you is sometimes a bit disconcerting."  
  
"You are fourteen. Act your age, not like some child. I lied to spare your life. I lied so that your would have the life I didn't. Haven't you been happy here? Haven't you enjoyed your stay at the college?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Then stop dwelling on the fact that I am not your real mother. For all real purposes I have been your mother. Just appreciate that you had one. I grew up not knowing my mother or my father, and when I did find out who they were. well, they weren't very nice people, let's just leave it at that."  
  
Cecilia stopped and looked at the woman with the hair that she used to touch, feeling its silky texture between her fingers. They even looked similar. the same expression in their eyes, the same smile.  
  
"Tell me how you know about the chimney, and tell me why you are so concerned about it."  
  
"Fine. As you know, the chimney is a lot... deeper, than it should be. This is because roughly halfway down it is a window into another world. The floor in the building of this other world doesn't correspond with the floor in our world. It's a lot deeper than ours is. That is why your stones went so far down. Oh yes," an indulgent smile crept to her lips "I confess, I was spying on you. I'm sorry, but it was dangerous for you to be out there so close to my secret alone."  
  
"How do you know about it though? What does this mean?" Cecilia sat down in the window seat and rested her head on her left hand; her right one reached down to stroke and ruffle her dæmon's feathers.  
  
"Your father, William. He was the holder of the subtle knife. This knife had the power to cut through the curtains of the universe, into other universes. We knew each other as children; we met in a universe that wasn't home to either of us. But we were torn apart. We knew that we could not be together, the holes form one universe to another let in evil. It let in sadness and disease and death. So Will had to close all the openings. It was his duty as knife keeper. So we were torn apart. But we could not bear to never see each other, so he left one window open. Then, whenever he was at home, on a short break from his never ending task, he would visit me, and we would sit together on the roof here, under the stars or summer sun, and we would remember our childhood and our love." She shuddered to a stop, casting the girl an experimental look. "Of course, none of this means anything to you."  
  
"Pardon me for being short, but by my calculations, we have very little time left. Could you get to the point." An overdose of information had led to Cecilia's voice and thoughts growing proceedingly cold. She felt like someone had ripped out her heart.  
  
"You're right, of course. We only have about twenty minutes before you need to leave. You're stay at the college has only been a brief time that had to pass before you're real purpose came to light... like a waiting room. But everything you've learned and experienced here will help you in your mission. Your birth, life and death were predicted by an order of women thousands of years ago. They were what the Greeks came to call The Fates. They used their own forms of magic and sorcery to predict the outcomes of certain events in history. A few hundred years ago researchers into the ancient scripts uncovered a prophecy... the birth of a witch child without any witch blood, born to the knife-holder, who was to battle the last great evil. Cecilia; as the prophecy dictates, you have to leave the college, and set off with your Zanhoriel," Lyra indicated Cecilia's bristling Persian- cat dæmon. "And you need to set out through the window, and try to find whatever it is you need to find. I can give you some supplies, some advice, but that is all. I don't know what you will be up against, and I cant help you battle it." she stood up and moved awkwardly towards Cecilia, her dæmon at her feet. She reached Cecilia at the window and put her arms around her in a tight embrace.  
  
Cecilia drew a deep breath and put her arms around Lyra, tugging at the end of her hair in the way she used to as a younger child. "So. I'd better be going then." She withdrew her arms and stood up, abruptly ending the hug. "Do I get to take some stuff with me? I need clothes and sleeping stuff, don't I? Unless the fates set up a hotel account for me. can I bring a suitcase on this mission le impossibel?"  
  
"I've got something for you, it's all ready." Lyra left the room briefly and came back in with a huge backpack, jammed with pockets and ties, the kind any noble explorer might take on any trip to far off lands. It seemed half-empty, and as Lyra dragged it in she began explaining its contents. I've packed a map that your father gave me years and years ago, of the whole country, with special maps of the main city. I used to love looking at it."she stared intently at the heavy hard backed book, tucked away at the back of the bag. "It might not be entirely accurate now, it's more than a decade out of date, but the main cities don't change much, it will still be extremely useful."  
  
Next she pointed to a thick winter coat, made from sheepskin with the soft fleece inside. "I bought this a few months ago, for you. I was starting to sense something would happen, but put it out of my mind. This will be extremely useful, especially if you have to sleep on the streets for a night or two." Seeing the young girls face blanche, Lyra rolled her eyes and shoved her softly in the shoulder. "Don't be so stupid. You probably wont have to, but don't ever consider yourself above sleeping rough. Where you're going, no one knows who you are, and your name means nothing. Of course, you will have this," she added, pulling out a large cloth sack which clunked loudly. "This is gold, Cecilia. I assume you know of it? This is enough gold to make sure you can stay in top hotels for a year, and not have to worry. When you get on to the train, there is a letter of instruction to tell you what to do with it, I don't have the time to explain now." Again, she answered the question in the girl's face. "Yes, you're going to have to take a train from the other-world oxford to a place called London. There are instructions in the letter as well."  
  
Somewhere outside the building, the great church bells began to toll. Lyra's dæmon looked up fearfully, seeming to gaze through the ceiling. "Damn it! I thought we had more time!" she grabbed Cecilia by the shoulders and shook her. "Girl, I can't explain anymore right now... we've run out of time. My letter will tell you all you need to know, but right now, we have only a few minutes left." Quickly, she got up and ran to the wardrobe. She pulled out a long black dress; the one Cecilia wore to funerals, and a black travelling coat. Without pausing, Lyra ripped Cecilia's dress off her, the violent movement causing the buttons to pop off and long abrasion marks formed on the young girl's shoulders. While her arms stung, her cries were muffled by the black dress, pulled roughly over her head and jerked down, it's zip yanked into place. Lyra threw the coat around the girl's shoulder and grabbed the backpack, pulling Cecilia out the door by her forearm.  
  
"Where are we going?" she cried, tripping over her own feet and running to keep up with Lyra, who was now sprinting up the spiral staircase towards the attic. Lyra didn't answer, just shoved the attic door open and pulled the girl toward the ladder leading to the roof. At the foot of the ladder she picked up a large sack that seemed to be full, as far as Cecilia could see, of clothes, and drove it into the rucksack, which was now stuffed to the brim.  
  
She pushed the hatch open so violently that it bounced off the shingles straight back down again. Lyra swore and pushed it again, more gently. She propelled the rucksack out onto the roof and pulled Cecilia along, only letting her go when they had reached the outside. She flew towards the chimney with the rucksack and dropped it down into the dark. Cecilia didn't hear it hit the bottom over the rush of blood in her ears. She trampled towards the chimney and Lyra, trying not to trip over her long skirts. Lyra was tying something to the stout root of the chimney, and Cecilia saw her drop the rope ladder down, down, slowly unravelling until the mouth swallowed up the last of the rope and pulled it tout against the brick.  
  
"Climb down the rope. If Zanhoriel changes into a large bird, he can guide the ladder to a balcony. From there you can climb down. When you get to the bottom, walk out the door and look for someone. When you find them, tell them that you need you arrived in the town last night, and need to catch a train to London, but cannot find the station. They will help you. When you get to the station, check the front small pocket of your bag; there are instructions there for the first part of what you need to do. The rest of the instructions are in the larger pocket, read them on the train. Now go child, we don't have more than another minute." Lyra kissed the girl on the forehead and embraced her briefly, before helping her start climbing. "Good luck, I hope that nothing dangerous lies ahead of you."  
  
Cecilia didn't dwell on these words; instead she climbed down the first three or four rungs of the ladder. Her body was now contained within the brick chimney. After another three rungs, her head was below the surface, and she had to concentrate harder on her footing. She looked up briefly at the silhouette of her guardian, heard on last whispered word of good luck, a hoarse cry of almost grief at parting, and then there was no more light. The rope seemed now to be coming from thin air. Scared, Cecilia clung to the ladder for a few moments, eyes squeezed tight while Zanhoriel fluttered around her head in robin form. Finally she opened her eyes and looked down. Immediately she clung tighter to the rope and wished she hadn't looked, as a wave of nausea washed over her like warm bile.  
  
The drop was much, much deeper than she had first thought. She was in a huge room, ancient and dull, probably a cathedral, judging from the arches and paintings on the walls. Her bag seemed miles away, lying like a rag- doll on the uneven stone floor. She didn't even want to think of what would happen if she fell from this height.  
  
"Zan?" she whispered, straining her ears to hear her dæmon's movements. A nibble at her ear, and Zanhoriel landed on her shoulder, a small hopping goldfinch.  
  
"I'm here, I wont fly around if it makes you nervous."  
  
"I'm scared Zan."  
  
"Me too."  
  
"I know. Can you look though?" a murmur of assent, and Cecilia felt the bird dæmon shift position, look around.  
  
"The rope goes down about twenty feet. About ten feet down from us theres a balcony. It's away from the rope, but if we swing we might be able to do it. Then we just jump onto the balcony. Mother-" Zanhoriel checked herself and started again. "Lyra said we'd be able to walk down from there. Maybe there's stairs. Just climb down for now. But you'd better open your eyes."  
  
Cecilia did so, making sure that this time she didn't look down. Gripping the ladder rungs until her knuckles turned white and then red, she slowly made her way down until her dæmon told her to stop. It took her four terrifying minutes to swing the rope ladder far enough over do that if she jumped she would land on the balcony. It took another minute for her to sum up her courage from the pit of her stomach and make the jump. She seemed to sail through the air forever, but eventually she landed with a force that expelled the breath from her body and left her gasping and paralysed. Zanhoriel lay next to her human, fox-tail brushing tears from her eyes, fur nuzzling against her neck.  
  
"Will you be ok?" Zanhoriel asked, sensing after a few minutes that Cecilia was getting her breath back. Cecilia jerked her head down, then up.  
  
After a minute the girl grabbed the balcony and pulled herself up, and once they had found the stairs down, she made her way there slowly, pausing every few steps. She got to the bottom and Zanhoriel barked happily, a fox cub dancing around her feet.  
  
Walking over to where the rucksack was, she thought a bit more about what she was doing. Just a few hours ago she was all set to jump down the chimney, into the adventure waiting for her. Who was she to start complaining because no she HAD to have an adventure? She stood a bit taller and cracked a smile. She just had to think of this like she thought of everything else. It would be an adventure.  
  
She picked up the rucksack, wincing only slightly at it's weight, and hoisted it onto her shoulder. With Zanhoriel trotting at her feet, she made her way towards the only door in the room, and towards a new adventure. 


End file.
